April 8, 2021: Governor Lujan Grisham signed New Mexico’s “End of Life Options Act” into law today, making the state the nation’s eleventh jurisdiction to legalize medical aid in dying. (The others are California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia.) The enactment follows by nearly five years a State Supreme Court ruling that the legality of physician-assisted dying should be resolved in the executive and legislative branches, not in the courts. The law goes into effect June 18.
The Governor said “New Mexicans deserve every single dignity we as a state and as a community can provide them. Dignity in dying — making the clear-eyed choice to prevent suffering at the end of a terminal illness — is a self-evidently humane policy.”
The basic structure of the law follows the model pioneered by Oregon. In New Mexico’s law, the prescribing health care provider may be a qualifying nurse or physician’s assistant as well as a physician. If the individual is in a hospice program, the requirement for having a consulting health care provider is waived (but in all cases at least one of the providers must be a physician.) A waiting period of 48 hours is required between making and filling the prescription, but this is waived if the individual may die during period.